The state of play

Hi everyone, and welcome to the first public update in... yikes. I expect you're all wondering what's going on. Supporters, I'm sorry again that this is also the first touching of the old base with you for a couple of weeks.

So for those outside the paywall, the situation is this: I'm currently in the middle of everything at once in real life. There are big changes happening at work that will hopefully eventually lead to my being able to step back and have more time for things like this project - however, in the meantime, I am having to work every hour there is to try and get ready for this. 

...While at the same time, I'm preparing to move house. (Which is SO much more complicated when you have one to sell as well as one to buy, last time this happened was over a decade ago, and I was a first-time buyer.) This madness has squeezed development time down considerably and so unfortunately, this development cycle is shaping up to be a long one.

The good news though is two-fold. Firstly, development has still been happening, albeit at this much-reduced pace while my attention has been elsewhere, and secondly, I don't want to jinx it, but we may have a slight lull in the insanity of IRL now, but I can't say how long that'll last.

But what have I actually been doing, you ask? Well, let's take a look!

Firstly, alongside the new quest, lots of quality-of-life stuff is going into this update. I have added a new type of school day event called micro events. There are about 15 of these in this update, covering first, second and fourth periods (sport is unaffected thus far.) The purpose of micro events is to move the day along more quickly, as happened in Rise of Poppy. They are far more likely to appear in Act 2 and while a quest is ongoing in order to allow you to play that quest more smoothly without being constantly interrupted by the same major event you've already seen half a dozen times. Micro events mostly just feature a few lines of dialogue (in many cases featuring gags to make them more entertaining) and then the bell rings and you're off. This has necessitated an overhaul of the school day generator which will be tested by the beta team once I'm ready for them.

Second, I've been tinkering a bit with the UI and you can now switch experience modes on and off from the menu.

This will make it a lot easier to tailor your game experience as you go and make adding new such modes a breeze as development progresses.

I've also completed the compression project and the game now weighs in at less than one gigabyte!

Finally, we've got a few pretty pictures to look at, as I have also been making a new quest, of course. The NSFW public previews will have to be put up over on Deviantart, but let's look at some of the ones in which our girls are still dressed, shall we?

Jessica just can't behave herself as usual and here we see Miss Paris having words with the sullen brat. I doubt it will end with words though...

Here is a first peek at the Staff Room, which we'll be seeing in this update and will also, now that it exists, be getting some school day events associated with it. The teachers lounge around in their nice comfy chairs, plotting what horrors they will unleash on our poor girl and her friends next.

Speaking of the teachers, I don't think I've shown the new ones off outside the supporter posts yet, so here they are! This is Miss Argolla, the fifth year teacher. As feared as she is beautiful, she's the strictest of the five and the one you have to get by if you want to graduate from Alancia's!

Third year teacher Miss Pupusa is, in contrast, the softest of the staff, but don't let that fool you into thinking that means you can get away with anything. Many girls have discovered to their cost (and embarrassment) that while she is more easy-going and fair, crossing her will end just as badly as with any of her coworkers.

I'd like to thank everyone for their patience as I navigate one of the busiest times I've ever had and hopefully you can see that even at a slower rate, the game is still progressing. Until next time!

Trinian